Chrono Cross Debug Mode

To activate debug mode, use the code 8006B456 0101 and press R1 while in the game.
Press R1 very gently; holding the button too long will skip the main debug menu and
go straight to map select.

(In the case of those debug string that are present in every room, decoding the field script indicate that squaresoft duplicated a debug entity in every room. That entity (usualy the last) is always active and waiting for a specific input to show the debug menu. That input is passed by an engine variable that I called scriptVar3. If scriptVar3 & 0x08 is set, the debug menu will show up.)

Menu Layout

Several of these break the four-line height of text boxes, and the options as a result go
well below the textbox. However, the decisions scroll down to the end of the string.
So, if something has 8 choices (like the main menu), the first option will highlight
the name of the fifth (since only 5-8 will be displayed). To get to the actual fifth
and beyond, you have to go below the textbox to the invisible options.

For the demo scenes, a map parameter of 0 or 1 starts one at one of two exits with
static characters. Moving takes one to the title screen. A parameter of 2 plays the
demo scenes. A parameter of more than that acts like 0 or 1 except that no characters
are loaded.

(From there, they proceed in the order given in 0332-1966—find where you want to go, pick the room number given in the filenames, and add 8 to get the debug map code. Some places will be available only on one disc or the other; frex, Terra Tower would only be accessible on CD 2 because its files don't exist on CD 1.)

The Debug Room

The demo version of Chrono Cross contains a debug room that was removed from the final. It appears that the debug mode map entries 000-007 originally corresponded to rooms of this sort, but only 000 snuck into the demo release.

"About that debug room, just to let you know, the character on the left allows to modify the current party composition. As most of the characters are not present in the demo data, it will crash if you try to add to the party an character missing from the demo. The character in the center is the "go anywhere" character. First choice is go to room by id, second if go to room by place name (like Arni village A/ Arni village). The last choice let you go to the planners room (not present in the demo data). The top right character is a shortcut to the planners room list. And finaly the bottom right is the sound test character that allows to test music and sound effects."